Fall 2020 was unprecedented in global history. Americans witnessed an election with the potential to spark violence and change the shape of democracy forever. 10.7 million people went jobless, and many were left without access to basic human rights, such as health care, housing, and food security. From the start of classes on August 24 to the day this class turned in its final assignment — December 8, 2020 — 107,142 Americans lost their lives to COVID-19. Approximately one-third of the U.S. know someone who has died of the coronavirus, an alarming figure that underscores how deeply personal the toll of this pandemic has been. The material effects of the pandemic and the simultaneous political and social movements of this time period have exposed many layers of inequality in American society, more so than ever before. Issues of race, class, party, and gender have become highlighted by this crisis, facilitating both learning and growth, as well as deepening the already crippling divisions that define our country.

As a result of the pandemic, the Claremont Colleges became remote, teaching classes in the online sphere and asking students to learn in the midst of deeply challenging global, national, and personal circumstances. In Sociology 154, we wrote papers applying classical sociological theory to modern issues of inequality and current events. Our works cover topics such as the racial and educational wealth gap, single motherhood, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and indigenous social movements in Bolivia. By applying a classical sociological lens to these modern themes, we sought to understand the historical moment that we are living through on both an individual and societal level, and create new scholarship around the inequality that has become increasingly pronounced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic response. In doing so, we expanded the definition of what constitutes “classical” sociology to make it more wide-ranging, inclusive, and applicable to the present day.

First, Chapter One covers how the racial wealth gap may be the barrier to financial literacy for people of color. Although there are low financial literacy rates among people of color, the racial wealth gap makes it so there are no finances to be literate about in the first place. W.E.B Du Bois, Marx, Engels, Weber and Bourdieu all help to understand how financial literacy rates and the racial wealth gap can be understood by analyzing classical sociological theory. The theory of Marx, Engels, Weber and Bourdieu gives insight into the world of capitalism, the systems of capital and the ways in which capital is accumulated overtime. This accumulation of capital overtime has made the racial wealth gap so much bigger than some may perceive in a society that some people may believe is post-racist. W.E.B Du Bois’s theory of the color line and the veil display how opportunities for people of color have been shaped by colonization which now leads us to understand why White America still holds most of the wealth. By understanding the classical theory we can get a deeper understanding of the capital systems and capital accumulation that make financial literacy necessary and how global racial relations impacts the capitalists systems.

In Chapter Two, Kelsey’s essay tackles the wealth gap in relation to higher education. Using the works of Weber, Marx, Simmel, and Bourdieu as her primary lenses for analysis, she investigates how higher education perpetuates inequality and the wealth gap alienates low-income students. Similar to Marx’s works that explain how capitalism engenders economic inequality and thus social inequality, higher education amplifies economic inequality and thus amplifies social inequality. Furthermore, using Weber’s definition of power, she asserts that education is a key aspect of the factors of power, making it an institute of inequality as an obstacle to power. Finally, using Simmel’s work, she argues that the low-income student plays the role of the “stranger” in higher education, as an outsider to  the wealth that characterizes these spaces. To illustrate these ideas, she uses Pomona College, a historically wealthy institution that admits a significant population of low-income students, as her case study. Pomona’s slim middle class makes it an excellent case to examine, and in this essay Kelsey argues that the unique positionality of low-income students makes them valuable critics whose voices must be heard and amplified.

Chapter Three explores how the United States, a country with the highest rate of single-parent households in the world, maintains an overwhelmingly negative opinion of single mothers. Specifically, 66% of Americans believe that single mothers have a poor influence on society as a whole, a large figure which crosscuts demographics of race, class, religion, and gender. By using the works of classical sociologists such as Engels, Perkins-Gilman, Weber, and Gramsci, and the contemporary theorists Goffman and de Beauvoir, it is possible to analyze the origins of hegemonic family structure in patriarchal capitalism and to consider the impacts these historical systems have on the perception of single mothers in society. Specifically, Engels explores the bourgeoisie’s emphasis on the monogamous, male-dominated family structure, an attitude which Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony helps to understand as passed culturally to the proletariat and adopted as an essential way of thinking, regardless of lived experience. Using Goffman’s works, single mothers can be seen as representing deviance from this norm, and as such are negatively stigmatized. Resultantly, unmarried women with children struggle with what Weber terms low class and economic status, as well as a variety of other obstacles such as financial inequality, increased mental health challenges, and higher rates of abuse. The combination of these factors create a very difficult role for single mothers to fulfill and succeed in, a challenge which will only be improved through a shift in values and opinion on the institutional and societal level.

In Chapter 4, Lauren’s paper chronicles the rise and fall of the Occupy Wall Street movement, tracking both the factors that catalyzed its formation as well as the impact the movement left on American society. She employs a theoretical framework from Marx, Weber, and Durkheim to analyze how the 2011 socioeconomic climate gave rise to such an outpouring of defiant, anti-establishment rebellion. Under Marxist thinking, capitalism begets inevitable economic crises — and the Great Recession, then, was wholly predictable in Marx’s view. The 2008 financial crisis was neither the first nor the last of its kind, and people’s increasing awareness of this inherent flaw of capitalism galvanized their anger towards the system. At the same time, capitalism was taking a material toll not only on people’s financial conditions but also on their personal well-being. Both Weber and Durkheim provide insights into how capitalism causes people to feel alienated from others — Weber’s “iron cage” theory explains that a ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy traps people in isolation, making them feel as though they are mere cogs in a machine, while Durkheim’s theory of “anomie” posits that when people live through a time of social change, they are likely to feel adrift and unsure of their place in society as the “organic solidarity” binding us together begins to break down. All of these insights are remarkably prescient when it comes to Occupy Wall Street. In the wake of a devastating financial crisis that caused mass unemployment — thereby weakening organic solidarity and making many people, especially young people, feel useless — the conditions were ripe for an anti-capitalist social movement to arise. Not only did the movement resist the power of the “1 percent,” but it also served to help its overwhelmingly young participants recapture the social ties that capitalism had severed. By coming together in the park, the protestors realized that they were not alone in feeling disconnected from, or disillusioned with, society at large. They formed a new sense of community, one that in itself was anti-capitalist in nature. Lauren discusses all of these facets of the movement, and more, in “A Chronicle of Occupy Wall Street: The Revolution of the 99 Percent.”

And finally in Chapter Five, Araceli Becerra examines Indigenous social movements in Bolivia. Since 2006, Bolivian politics has been characterized by leftist President Evo Morales, the country’s first Indigenous president. How have Indigenous people in Bolivia built social movements that successfully challenged the status quo and yielded results? To understand the popularity of President Morales and his political party, Movement Towards Socialism (MAS-IPSP), Becerra examines the history of Indigenous political participation in Bolivia with theories from Marx and Engels, DuBois, and Weber. She finds that consolidation of the numerous Indigenous organizations and the ability of leaders to link the movement’s goals to the needs of other working class and poor Bolivians were key to the success of the MAS-IPSP Party. As a charismatic leader, Evo Morales led both these efforts and became the visible representation of Indigenous resistance.

Overall, this collection of papers, written by undergraduate students at the Claremont Colleges in Fall 2020, is rooted in the use of sociological imagination to analyze contemporary issues. Under the instruction of Professor Hernández-Medina, students enrolled in Sociological Theory I spent the semester studying the concepts of the discipline’s founders. As part of the final project for the course, the theories and perspectives studied were then applied to a topic of our choice. Despite the wide range of issues covered in the following essays, common themes include racial disparities, economic inequality, and the dangers of capitalism. We hope that you find them both valuable and enjoyable to read!